Can you use Broad, Exact and Phrase Match together in Pay Per Click?

If you are going to use Exact, Phrase and Broad match together, make sure you stagger your bids in order of your preference. For example if your exact match keyword isn’t achieving the traffic you would like, you can supplement it with the wider phrase and broad match keywords. But giving your preference to exact match, you will use more of your budget for more relevant and highly targeted keywords.

This way, if for example you were promoting Fake Bake tanning products, and were bidding for the keyword “Fake Bake Airbrush Tanning Kit”
You may want to boost your traffic and appear for variations such as “Fake Bake Moisturiser”, “Fake Bake” or “Fake Tan”. You would order your keywords with staggered Cost Per Click (CPC) budgets, something like this:

Exact – 0.50
Phrase – 0.30
Broad – 0.05

And perhaps add in some negative keywords like “home bake” “home baking” “tan leather” “fake boobs”… you get the point!

Bear in mind that your advert will be shown more regularly if you achieve a higher click through rate (CTR), so although your bid staggering will help distribute your advertising budget to the most relevant terms, it’s not fool proof, and if your broad match is making you show up for “fake bake tanning products ruined my marriage”, you’re likely to get a high CTR due to limited competition.

Once you’ve set this up, don’t think you can leave it to fester – you have to be very careful with broad match, and this match type may or may not work for your situation.

Keep your eye on terms that you’re adverts are being show for and keep adding to your negative keyword list. This way you can continually improve your conversion rates, reduce your cost per conversion and improve your return on investment.